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Crockpot (or Stovetop) Ham and Cabbage Soup with Red Bell Pepper

When you've absolutely had enough rich holiday food, use your leftover ham to make this delicious Ham and Cabbage Soup with Red Bell Pepper! This low-glycemic and gluten-free soup is South Beach Diet Phase Two, or omit the carrots if you want a low-carb version.

It's Christmas Eve, and I'm going to take some time off from the blog to spend the holidays with my family. But before I do that I thought I'd spotlight this delicious Crockpot (or Stovetop) Ham and Cabbage Soup with Red Bell Pepper. This tasty soup is the perfect thing to make with leftover holiday ham, and I promise this soup will taste great in a few days when you're completely tired of rich foods.

I first made this delicious Ham and Cabbage Soup when I'd spent a few weeks of testing and eating Christmas cookies, and my body was telling me I needed some vegetables! The recipes produces soup with cabbage that's melt-in-your-mouth tender from slow cooking, and there are lots of herbs and spices to make this a very tasty soup. And if you really want to start early with the healthy eating, leave out the carrots to make this a Low-Carb soup!

Merry Christmas to all my faithful readers, and I hope your holidays will be filled with fun times with the people you love.

Start by chopping up a whole head of cabbage. I had about 1 3/4 lbs. of cabbage after I trimmed it and removed the core.

Chop up an onion and a red bell pepper into same-size pieces. I made them fairly small.

I had some lovely thin carrots, so I just sliced them into round pieces. If you have thicker carrots, I'd chop them up a bit more. (Leave out the carrots for the most low-carb version of the soup.)

Cut up some enough ham to make about 2 cups of diced ham (1 1/4 lb.) Use lean ham for this soup.

I save the ham rinds and use them to make ham stock (more to come about that!)

If you can find it in your store, this Goya Ham Flavored Concentrate is a product I love to use when I don't have ham stock. If you can't find this product, you can also order Ham Flavor Base from Penzeys. This soup can also be made with chicken or vegetable stock.

It's not especially a photogenic soup, but this soup was really delicious, especially with a bit of Parmesan cheese sprinkled on top when you eat it!

Instructions:
I used a 3.5 quart "Smart Pot" slow cooker for this recipe, where you can program the time and it switches to warm when the time is up. You can use any slow cooker that's a 3-4 quart size.

With all the healthful cabbage and using lean ham, this low-glycemic soup is a great choice for the South Beach Diet, although it would be phase two with the carrots. I think this would still be great without carrots if you wanted to make it for phase one though, maybe adding some chopped celery or even more onion, and leaving out carrots would make this a low-carb soup as well.

I chose the South Beach Diet to manage my weight partly so I wouldn't have to count calories, carbs, points, or fat grams, but if you want nutritional information for a recipe, I recommend entering the recipe into Calorie Count, which will calculate it for you. Or if you're a member of Yummly, you can use the Yum button on my site to save the recipe and see the nutritional information there.

More Delicious Soups with Cabbage:
(Recipes from other blogs may not always be South Beach Diet friendly; check ingredients.)

Posts may include links to my affiliate account at Amazon.com, and this blog earns a few cents on the dollar if readers purchase the items I recommend, so thanks for supporting my blog when you shop at Amazon!

A note about vegeta, I first had it in a delicious soup in Croatia and could not believe my hostess when she told me about it. I brought back a few packets but have found cans of it in ethnic markets in Latin, Middle Eastern, Asian and Eastern European communities here in the San Francsico Bay Area, so it's out there.

Can I freeze it? Please answer. Made it yesterday, but unusual circumstances have arisen, and we will not be around to eat the significant amount left. It's delicious, by the way, and what I needed to rid myself of too much sugar recently.

Laura, sorry to be slow to answer. I've been away all day and just got back on the computer. I haven't frozen this soup, but I can't think of any reason why it wouldn't freeze well. Hope you've already put it in the freezer by now!

I made this right after the holidays, when I was definately feeling over the overindulgence. It turned out great. I did not have vegetta, so just added more of the spike seasoning. I had a jar of roasted red peppers, so I used those instead of fresh. Also, I used chicken stock, instead of ham, which I had on hand. Absolutely wonderful. And I did freeze it and the reheated, frozen, leftovers were great as well.

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